


Smoke and Sugar

by Siavahda



Series: The Lightbringer Princes [1]
Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Children, Gen, Runed AU, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-22
Updated: 2015-05-22
Packaged: 2018-03-31 17:00:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3985891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siavahda/pseuds/Siavahda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one believes him, but Jonathan remembers Symeon's birth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smoke and Sugar

   No one believes him, but Jonathan remembers Symeon’s birth.

   He is two years old. His mother is not well. She is holding Jonathan’s newest brother inside her, but there is something wrong. He understands this, although no one takes the time to tell the toddler so. They don’t have to. Even at two years old, he knows the taste of fear and panic in the air. It is smoke and sugar.

   When he slips from under the eyes of his nursemaid – the woman locked in frantic conversation with another servant, too occupied to notice him – and catches a glimpse of his mother, he understands more.

   He can smell her sweat, and the scent of it is wrong. He can hear her breathing, and the quick, fluttering rhythm of it is wrong. He can hear her heartbeat, and it is wrong too.

   He understands it all, before someone snatches him up and hurries him away.

   In the nursery, he plays solemnly with Jace and strains to listen to his mother’s heartbeat through the walls. He hears her when she begins to pant, and he hears her when she screams. There are other sounds – his father’s voice, and a midwife’s – but he ignores them. They are not important.

   He listens to his mother’s heartbeat, and he hears the moment when it stops.

   Jonathan does not grieve. Grief, sorrow, pain; these are things he does _not_ understand, not the way he will realise, in a few years, that he is supposed to. He hears his father howl, and is more interested in the shriller, higher wail of a baby that winds through his cry.

   His newest brother. Jonathan wants to meet him.

   But it is some time before they are introduced. Jonathan is impatient, and restless, and does not soothe Jace when the one-year-old slips into a tantrum. He lets his brother shriek and beat his chubby fists in the air, so that when the nurse comes to soothe him the way is clear for Jonathan to slip free again.

   When the adults discover him, and what he did, later, they cannot work out how he managed to find the newborn. They know he can hear more than other Shadowhunters, but the manor is full of men and women in gear, full of their sorrow and anger and the clank and crash of their weapons. There is shouting and tears and Valentine’s raging grief filling the children’s home like smoke. There is far too much noise for the two-year-old to have tracked a quiet heartbeat he doesn’t even know yet.

   No one has ever asked him, because they think he doesn’t remember. But he does. Jonathan remembers a sensation like hearing a song in the dark – a soft, quiet song, scared and alone, echoing in his head. Jace heard it too, that was why he cried, but Jace was too small to follow it. He could barely walk yet. It was up to Jonathan to listen hard and track down the singer, weaving between the longer legs and shouting voices in the hallways.

   He found his newest brother lying alone in a room that stank of blood. Jonathan ignored the smell, and the pale, still body lying on the bed, and went directly to the cradle in the corner. But it was too high for him – he couldn’t even _see_ the small, warm thing he could feel was inside it. “Ssh,” he told the baby, even though he wasn’t crying – not aloud, not in any way anyone else could hear. “I’m here now. I’ll get you out.”

   He dragged a stool half again as tall as he was over to the cradle, and climbed it, and peered down at the baby. “See? I told you.”

   Deep brown eyes blinked up at him, swirling with flecks of hazel-gold and almost-black. Jonathan had seen full grown Shadowhunters flinch away from the pitchy darkness of his eyes, but the baby gurgled happily and reached up with tiny arms, sea-anemone fingers clenching and unclenching eagerly. Jonathan obliged, carefully reaching down to pick him up. He remembered to pull one of the blankets up with the baby, because small things got cold. “And you’re _very_ small,” he told his brother as he climbed down the stool. It was true – the newborn was even smaller than Jonathan’s dim memories of a baby Jace, small enough for a strong two-year-old to hold and carry. “But it’s all right. You’ll get bigger, and I’ll look after you until you do. Jace will help, when _he’s_ big enough.”

   He carried the baby past the cooling corpse of their mother without glancing at it; carried his brother all the way back to the nursery. By the time they reached it, those brown eyes had fallen closed, the tiny face nuzzled against Jonathan’s chest like a puppy, delicate fingers curled in his big brother’s shirt. Jonathan knew newborn babies could hold onto things tightly enough to hang from a washing line (there had been a great deal of screaming involved, after, and the child’s parents had not come back), and it was very smart of his brother to hold onto him. Jonathan would look after him.

   The baby was sleeping, and thus quiet, but the nursemaids had noticed Jonathan’s absence by then. “Be silent,” he told them, in the same cold, frosty voice he had heard his father use, when they shrieked and flailed. “He’s _asleep_.” Small things slept a lot, he remembered that – they needed sleep to get bigger.

   They tried to take his brother away from him, and Jonathan growled, clutching him tighter. The women paused, but then persisted, and mother had told him he was not allowed to bite people but mother was dead. They tried to pry his brother away and Jonathan sank his teeth into their hands hard enough to taste copper and make them yell. He laughed, because the shapes their faces made were funny.

   “Fetch Valentine,” someone said, and someone else asked “What if he hurts the baby?” and Jonathan bared bloody teeth at them. They were stupid. Stupid people weren’t allowed near his brother. _Either_ of his brothers.

   When his father burst into the nursery, his eyes wild, Jonathan was in the corner, holding the baby and trying to think of a way to steal Jace away from the fools supposed to look after him.

   “Jonathan…” His father’s voice was hoarse as he knelt in front of the toddler. “Will you give me your brother?”

   “No!” Jonathan snarled. The nurses flinched. Jonathan clutched the baby to him. “He’s _mine!_ ”

   “He _is_ yours,” Valentine agreed. “But you’re too young to take care of him properly. Will you let us do it, until you’re old enough?”

   Jonathan bared his teeth. “You all forgot about him!” he accused, growling. “He was crying!”

   His father flinched. It was not the same as the nurses’ fear-flinch. His eyes were wet. “We did,” Valentine said softly. “I’m sorry, Jonathan. You’re a good boy for looking after your brother. I’m very proud of you. But I promise I won’t forget him again. I’ll take care of him properly, if you let me have him.”

   Jonathan considered this. His father always kept his promises, but… “Swear,” he ordered, and everyone who was there, everyone who told the story later agreed that the boy spoke as if he were already on the throne, already an adult. “Swear to look after him. _Properly_.”

   His father’s lips twitched. Jonathan knew that was supposed to mean someone was happy, but Valentine looked sad. “I swear by the Angel to always look after him.” He said softly.

   “ _Properly_.”

   That twitch again. “Properly,” Valentine echoed.

   Jonathan considered this. “Very well,” he said graciously. He allowed their father to carefully take Jonathan’s brother, watching him warily, ready to snatch him back at a moment’s notice. Their father held the baby like he was made of glass, cradling him close, but his breathing was ragged as he bent to kiss the newborn’s forehead.

   “Are you going to collapse?” Jonathan asked. Because if so, his father should give the baby back to Jonathan.

   “No, Jonathan, I’m not going to collapse.” There was wetness on Valentine’s face when he raised his head. Tears, Jonathan remembered. Jace made them sometimes, when he was upset or wanted something. “I’m just sad.”

   “Why?” Jonathan asked curiously. “He’s all right. I took care of him.”

   His father smiled, a small curve of his mouth. “You did.” He glanced down at Jonathan’s brother. “Would you like to know his name?”

   Jonathan shrugged. “I already know it.” He smiled at his brother, blood on his teeth. “He’s Symeon.”


End file.
